


Quantum whatnow?

by Magik3



Series: Katyana Future Middle-Age [5]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Cute, F/F, Quantum Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 10:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11484264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magik3/pseuds/Magik3
Summary: Just a fun conversation about how Kitty's powers work, in which Magik tries to talk about magic without saying "magic" too often.





	Quantum whatnow?

**Author's Note:**

> Because KittyViolet asked how the phase projectiles in the "Working Out" piece would actually work. Also a huge thanks to James Kakalios' "The Physics of Superheroes: Spectacular Second Edition" and its excellent chapter on Kitty's powers.

  
  
After class, I wandered over to Kitty’s office. Sue Storm-Richards was in there, sitting at the small, round table with Kitty, looking over papers with a lot of math and charts. Grey was there too, leaning against the wall, arms folded, watching out the window as kids played on the lawn.  
  
Sue was saying, “ … quantum tunneling, yes, it may be a probability-based power because you’re influencing the wave function one way or the other. Reed agrees that calling the projectiles ‘heavy’ or ‘light’ is misleading, so we’re proposing that we describe them as more or less weird.”  
  
“Where more weird is the 100 percent tunneling state?” Kitty asked. “And less weird is what you’re trying to get me to do to create projectiles?”  
  
“Exactly.”  
  
“And it has to be probability-based and not telekinetic because we haven’t seen telekinesis that works at the quantum level,” Kitty said.  
  
I went into the room and dropped into the overstuffed armchair Kitty liked for reading. I said, “It’s magic. Just admit it’s magic and that quantum mechanics is a bunch of fancy words science uses to try to describe magic.”  
  
“You can’t explain everything as magic,” Grey said.  
  
“Have you met me? I can.”  
  
“Magic doesn’t help me understand how to do this,” Kitty said and went back to talking to Sue, because she knows when to ignore me. “So I disrupt electronics when I phase through them because in the 100 percent weird state, I’m disrupting the electrons, that’s a good description. But what if my powers only go from normally weird to more weird? How do we know I could make a patch of air less weird?”  
  
“Because math,” Grey said.  
  
Kitty and Sue stared at her.  
  
“If you can plus one a thing, there’s no reason you can’t minus one it, except that you don’t think you can.”  
  
I completely agreed with what she was saying, but I had to argue anyway. In part because Grey and also because I hoped Kitty would take Grey’s side. I said, “That can’t be true or Iceman could light himself on fire.”  
  
“Iceman’s powers aren’t mathy. Kitty’s are.”  
  
I rolled my eyes at Grey and parroted the phrase she said a gazillion times in every class she taught: “Work within your paradigm.” Adding my own, “Except when my paradigm subsumes your paradigm.”  
  
“If I control your mind, I control your paradigm,” she said.  
  
“But you can’t because my magic blocks your mind control, i.e. my paradigm eats yours for lunch,” I continued in Russian <and craps it out on the carpet>.  
  
Kitty and Sue had been ignoring us and writing on the pages in front of them. Sue tapped the pencil on the paper and said, “The math works. It is possible.”  
  
“But is it doable?” Kitty asked.  
  
“Yes,” I said, trying to work out how to talk about magic without saying the word magic again and derailing the conversation. “Because the math and the quantum theories you’re describing are theories. They are a map, not the territory. How do you hold it in your mind when you phase something that is not you?”  
  
I felt pretty proud of myself for not having said: _when you phase my pants off._  
  
“There’s a feeling to it,” Kitty said. “Like spinning it up, but inside. There’s an up, back, invisible inside place that I have to spin it from.”  
  
“And when you do the hard phase, so your sword hurts but doesn’t kill?”  
  
“It’s spinning up inside with a twist.”  
  
“And when you unphase a thing, is it spinning down?”  
  
“No, it’s just unspinning. That’s why I can’t do this. There is no spinning down.”  
  
“Can you take something you have not yet phased, unspin and twist it?”  
  
“Huh.”  
  
Kitty looked at her palm, fingers curled up like she was holding an invisible ball. She looked at it for a long time. I was holding my breath. I think Sue was too. Grey went back to staring out the window.  
  
Finally Kitty pulled back her arm and threw the handful of air at her desk. Something hit the surface, pushed papers to the side.  
  
“Oh wow,” she said. “That’s going to take some practice. And I have to work out how to do momentum, but maybe … Sue, do you think my powers also have an energy conservation aspect or lack thereof because of the way the speed of an object influences the probability of tunneling?”  
  
“Let’s find a whiteboard and do some formulas,” she said.  
  
_See,_ I thought loudly in Grey’s direction; she could hear my thoughts when I wanted her to, which was rarely. _Magic works in any human paradigm because it’s the mastery of consciousness._  
  
She thought back, _what I hear you saying is that if I’ll listen to your insufferable bragging, you’ll buy me dinner._  
  
_And that’s why smart telepaths are dangerous. You pick the place, I’ll drive._  
  
  
  
  



End file.
